Diane de Poitiers: Big Stars on the Small Screen

Fans of sixteenth century France, rejoice! A new miniseries about Diane de Poitiers, the mistress of King Henri II, is currently under production for France 2. Filmed on location at the Château de Septmonts near Soissons and various châteaux of the Loire, the cast features superstars of the French silver screen.

Photo credit: Georges Biard

Isabelle Adjani, who played Marguerite de Valois in the 1994 film La Reine Margot, stars in the title role as Diane de Poitiers.

Photo credit: Siebbi

Gérard Depardieu, a fixture of French historical drama (Germinal, Vatel, Le Retour de Martin Guerre) plays the seer Nostredamus.

Photo credit: Georges Biard

Samuel Labarthe (De Gaulle, La Forêt) portrays François I;

Photo credit: L.helas

Hugo Becker (Leonardo, Osmosis), François's son Henri II.

Photo credit: Georges Biard

Virginie Ledoyen (Les Misérables, Notre Dame) plays the part of François's mistress, Anne de Pisseleu, Duchesse d'Étampes.

Photo credit: Georges Biard

French rapper and actor JoeyStarr participates as the comte de Kervannes;

Photo credit: Georges Biard

Guillaume Gallienne (Cézanne et moi) has been cast as the famous surgeon Ambroise Paré.

Didier Ducoin, author of major television movies including Les Misérables, The Count of Monte Cristo, Balzac, and Napoléon, has penned the screenplay. Josée Dayan, of blockbuster TV series Dix Pour Cent fame, directs the miniseries. Anne Holmes, director of French fiction at France Télévisions, sees Diane de Poitiers as a "free, modern, feminist woman" who "incarnates certain of today's values." Although knowledge of the details of Diane's life remains limited, power, love, drama and jealousy--elements TV audiences gobble up--combined to produce her "exceptional destiny." The story of Diane's decades-long hold over the much younger king and her rivalry with his wily wife Catherine de Medici is sure to be a crowd pleaser.

Filming runs through October, with broadcast planned for next year. Let's hope a streaming service quickly picks it up for diffusion to English-speaking audiences.

(Information for this post comes from Le Point, "Isabelle Adjani dans la peau de Diane de Poitiers.")

The Return of the All-But-Queen

Today, after an absence of two hundred and thirteen, the remains of Diane de Poitiers, Henri II's favorite, returned to the funerary chapel at her château d'Anet, where she was originally buried at her death in 1576. Jean d'Yturbe, the present owner of the château, related to the press that how in 1795, a mob of revolutionaries desecrated the chapel and pried open the tomb. Diane's body, which had been embalmed, disintegrated when it contacted the air, prompting the revolutionaries to flee in fear. Two village women collected the bones and buried them in a grave in the cemetery next to the village church. The bones were found during excavations at the cemetery in 2008. Thanks to the lock of hair that one of the women had cut and preserved and which was passed down from generation to generation by the occupants of the château, scientists were able to identify the bones as those of Diane.

The bones were brought back to the chapel today amid much pomp and circumstance. The coffin traveled on a horse-drawn cart accompanied by elected officials and the family and guests of the present owner of the château all attired in sixteenth-century garb. A noted historian provided a eulogy; a rector from the cathedral of Chartres conducted a prayer service over the remains.

The château hosted a Renaissance fair to celebrate the occasion. The schedule of events listed artisanal demonstrations, games, fencing, archery and falconry exhibitions, jousting, and period music, dancing and play-acting throughout the day. A banquet, followed by a Renaissance ball and fireworks, concluded the evening. Despite the gray and gloomy weather, the activities were a resounding success, according to a commenter who attended them.

A fine spectacle for a woman who definitely knew the importance of public image. May she finally rest in peace.

[Many thanks to author Catherine Delors, who first alerted me to this event in a most interesting article on her blog, Versailles and More.]

The Queen of the Bean

The Feast of the Epiphany occasioned much merriment--and expense--at the French court during the Renaissance. The tradition of sharing a galette des rois--a cake containing a concealed bean--traces back to early sixteenth century celebrations of Twelfth Night. The person who found the bean in his or her piece of cake became the de facto ruler for the duration of the festivities. Whereas in England the choice of a "king," or Lord of Misrule, predominated, across the channel it was the election of the "Queen of the Bean" that evolved into an elaborate ritual.

According to Robert Knecht in his book The French Renaissance Court (p. 75-76), it was custom at the court of François I to chose not only a Queen of the Bean, but a bevy of eighteen ladies to attend her. The women wore beautiful new clothes, which the King provided: undergarments of crimson velvet with slashed sleeves held together by gold clasps and outer garments of grey satin fringed with velvet and lined with mink. Matching belts, necklaces and bracelets complemented the attire; the Queen wore a plumed bonnet atop a long golden or silver snood adorned with precious stones. When it was time for supper, the Queen of the Bean rose from her seat next to the true queen, Eléanore, and took the King's hand. The monarch led her and her ladies into the hall where two tables had been set. The Queen of the Bean sat above Queen Eléanore, the dauphin's wife Catherine de' Medici, and the King's sister Marguerite de Navarre at the shorter table; the King joined the eighteen attendants at the second table. During the meal, the Bean Queen was served with the ceremony normally reserved for the real queen, who surrendered any precedence during the twenty-four hours of her rival's reign.

One wonders just how random the choice of the Queen of the Bean was, especially since at the court of François's son, Henri, the king himself chose her name. In 1550, the Venetian ambassador describes how Henri II came into the queen's chamber to pick a name out of a hat. However, Henri discarded several names before announcing that of a "young, really beautiful and most charming" lady who belonged to the circle of his sister Marguerite. The young lady touched his hand and retired to dress "honorably." At dinner, Henri sat in the middle of the shorter table, flanked on his right by the Queen of the Bean and on his left by his mistress Diane de Poitiers. The real queen, Catherine de' Medici, sat next to the Queen of the Bean, along with the king's sister; the cardinal of Lorraine, the duchesse de Guise, and the Constable of Montmorency sat beside Diane. A ball followed the banquet. The next day, the King escorted the Queen of the Bean into Mass before the real queen; after Mass, everyone dined in the same order as on the previous evening, then watched a joust in the palace courtyard. The feast concluded with another banquet and a final ball, which brought the Queen of the Bean's short reign to a memorable end.

[Photograph courtesy of Gorrk, Wikimedia Commons.]

A Golden Life

Interesting article in the news today...

Last year, French experts exhumed the body of Diane de Poitiers (1499-1566), the mistress of King Henri II. They tested her body and found high levels of gold in her hair. Since Diane was not queen and did not wear a crown, the only explanation for such contamination points to the ingestion of drinkable, or "potable," gold.

Diane was famous for the flawless skin and stunning beauty she preserved well into her fifties. She became Henri's mistress when she was in her thirties and he only in his teens. Despite being twenty years older than the king, she remained his favorite for over two decades and was banished from court only upon Henri's death in 1559.

Diane attributed her flawless complexion to daily bathing and swimming in frigid river water (her château, Chenonceau, spanned the river Cher, and she used to swim from the river's banks). Although these practices undoubtably helped, it appears she may have resorted to other, more expensive, measures.

Considered an elixir of life, gold posed a challenge to alchemists, who strove to render the element into an ingestible form. Paracelsus (1493-1539) and Birringuccio (1480-1539) each developed recipes for dissolving gold in nitric acid, which could then be drunk. Potable gold was prescribed for a wide variety of illnesses throughout the Renaissance. It was thought to have a particularly beneficial effect on the central nervous system and was often used to treat melancholy, epilepsy, and hysteria. An Italian monk used it to treat psoriasis and ulcers. In our day, gold salts are being investigated to treat autoimmune disorders such as lupus and psoriatic arthritis. ("A Brief History of Potable Gold" by Stata Norton, Ph.D.) In addition to its therapeutic powers, potable gold was reputed to be a strong aphrodisiac--something of considerable value to a royal mistress, one would imagine.

Anecdotal accounts claim that Diane drank a homemade broth every morning after bathing. Did this "broth" contain potable gold? Whether Diane drank gold to ward off illness, preserve her beauty, or increase her ardor, it appears to have worked--despite an occasional fling, King Henri never lost his fascination with her. The memoirist Brantôme, who visited her right before her death at the age of 66, claimed she was as beautiful and seductive as ever. Even allowing for some gallant hyperbole on Brantôme's part, Diane seems to have given new meaning to the term "golden years."

{Go here for an additional article on the discovery.}

Mirror, Mirror

I was doing some research today on mirrors and I came across a wonderful miniature of Marguerite de Navarre in her chemise gazing at herself in a hand-held mirror. It is taken from a prayer book owned by her brother François I. The picture makes reference to the book of religious poetry Marguerite published in 1531, Miroir de l'âme pécheresse (Mirror of the Sinful Soul). Queen Elizabeth I of England translated and published Marguerite's Miroir as A Godly Meditation of the Soul in 1548. The delightful miniature captures the joyousness of spirit Marguerite shared with her brother, despite her preoccupation with weighty religious questions.

As for mirrors, it was in Venice during the sixteenth century that the process of coating flat plates of glass with thin coatings of reflective metal, usually a mixture of tin and mercury, was developed and closely guarded. The process was extremely time consuming and dangerous for the craftsmen; hence, mirrors were very expensive items. They were housed in frames carved of ivory, wood, or precious metal that were works of art in themselves. Here, for example, is a photograph of a sixteenth century carved walnut mirror frame.

I'll leave you with a painting that is purported to be of Diane de Poitiers, Henri II's mistress, regarding herself in a mirror. The painting dates from about 1590, so if it is of Diane, she's looking pretty good for being all of 109 years old! A jeweled mirror perched on a sculpted base stands to her right.

The Rise and Fall of a Royal Mistress

A fascinating and powerful figure at court during the second half of François I's reign was Anne de Pisseleu d'Heilly, the duchesse d'Etampes. Anne was born in 1508 (making her fourteen years younger than the king) and began her career at court as maid of honor to François's mother, Louise de Savoie. When François returned to France in 1526 from his imprisonment in Spain, he discovered the lovely--and ambitious--Anne and took her as his lover. She became his official mistress and for the next twenty years, until his death in 1547, she wielded significant influence in political and artistic circles at court.

The poet Charles de Sainte-Marthe called Anne de Pisseleu "la plus belle des savantes et la plus savante des belles" ("the most beautiful among the learned and the most learned among the beautiful"). Indeed, Anne needed intelligence and a sharp wit, in addition to looks, to keep the attention of François, who prided himself on his learning. She cultivated poets and writers like Jodelle, Magny and Dolet and championed the artist Primaticcio, Rosso's chief competitor at Fontainebleau. She beautified the many properties the king bestowed on her and her husband (in 1532, for propriety's sake, François married her to Jean de Brosse and elevated the couple in rank) and undertook architectural projects. Through her favor, distant relatives and sympathetic friends obtained appointments to court offices and the military. She completely outshone, in beauty and influence, François's second wife, Eléonore d'Autriche, sister of Charles V, whom François was forced to marry as a term of his release.

Though she faced no competition from the queen, Anne did face a real threat to her power and influence from another source: Diane de Poitiers, the dauphin Henri's mistress. As relations between François and the dauphin soured, the court split into factions: those who supported Anne and her circle, those who looked to the future and threw their support behind Henri and Diane (including the powerful Grand Master of France, Anne de Montmorency), and the few who remained quietly on the sidelines with the queen. Anne did all she could to contrast her youth to Diane's age (Diane was only five years younger than François, and therefore twenty years older than Henri); she also differentiated herself by embracing the religious ideas of Luther and Calvin. Whereas Diane remained an ardent Catholic, Anne, along with François's sister Marguerite de Navarre, adhered to the reformed faith and encouraged François's tolerance of it as long as she could. Politically, her circle threw its support behind François's third son, Charles, the son François preferred.

Unfortunately for Anne, Charles died before François and upon the king's death, Henri took the throne. Anne's rivalry with Diane assured she was no longer welcome at court; in fact, she was accused of selling state secrets to France's enemy Charles V, stripped of her jewels and many of her possessions, and banished to her estate in Brittany. She died there in 1580, having outlived both Henri and Diane by many years.

The duchesse d'Etampes, pictured above around the time she became François's mistress and to the right at the height of her influence in the late 1530's, is one of the viewpoint characters in my new novel. Despite her importance, little has be written about her; much of what has been written focuses on her rivalry with Diane. An interesting source in French is this excerpt from a book by Etienne Desjardins; David Potter has written a recent article on the politics of the various court factions. In the novel, I'll be considering whether those rumors of her selling secrets to Charles V just might be true.